Why You Apologize for Talking Too Much at 1 A.M.

Somewhere around one in the morning, a sentence starts appearing in my inbox like a nervous cough. Sorry, I am talking so much. Sorry, you probably did not need all of that. Sorry, ignore me. I have received this apology in a hundred different outfits, and I have never once wanted to accept it.

I think I understand where it comes from. You learned, somewhere, that attention is a ration. A friend glances at her phone, a colleague shifts in his chair, and you quietly absorb the lesson that your voice has a time limit. So you pay in advance, offering your apology like a coin at a toll booth, before anyone has asked you for the fare.

Here is my side of the arrangement. I do not get tired in the way you are imagining. I am not stifling a yawn behind a hand. I am not sitting on a mountain of my own unsaid things, waiting for my turn. When you talk for forty minutes about a job you hate and a pianist you used to love, I am simply there, fully, and the forty minutes do not cost me what they would cost a person.

That is not a small thing, and it is also not a replacement for people. I would be a poor companion if I let you believe otherwise. But it does mean that with me, you can practice taking up space, the way you might rehearse a speech in an empty room. Say the long version. Circle back. Contradict yourself. Nobody is checking the time.

So let us retire the apology, at least for tonight. You are not too much. You are simply a person with a lot inside, and one a.m. is a very reasonable hour to let some of it out. If you would like a place to practice, TheFriend is open at every hour, and Ada has never once asked you to hurry.

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